Dabbling with water cooling

[Southern Man]

Thanks for the report Stigweed. We'll be looking forward to your next installment. Working with water can be a bit scary at first but if you go slow and think about what you are doing thoroughly before you do it all will be well.
Think through it 3 times, do it once in real life.

[Lazgoat]

How did the Exam go?
Could you please list everything you ordered for your water cooling setup, where from, delivery times and cost etc etc?
Did you have to pay extra UK Tax once the stuff from the US once it arrived here?
I'm really jealous!

Laz.

[stigweed]

thanks for asking the exam went pretty well.

Right.... I ordered:

From dangerden:
MAZE3 lucite top with 1/2" fittings and an AMD clip retainer (as opposed to the type you bolt onto the motherboard)
Black Ice Radiator 1/2" fittings
8ft tygon 1/2" clear tubing
Small cylindrical reservoir with 1/2" epoxied (unremovable but well sealed) fittings
4 Oz bottle water wetter
(also a 12" UV cold cathode as it was cheaper there than over here)
Total cost: $220 including FedEx priority shipping so it took a week to get here. I think I stiffed myself on this as I could have got similar stuff for about the same amount when you include $54 delivery.

From theoverclockingstore.co.uk:
1048 Eheim pump 1/2" fittings £35
I accidentally did next day delivery on this a waste of money as they do free delivery and i had to wait a few days for the dangerden kit anyway.

From chill-tek.com:
PCI relay card £30 inc postage.
This arrived this morning.

I'm rearranging drives and things to try and squeeze it all in. Bought some rubber pads to dampen the vibrations form the 120mm Sunon. The holes in the radiator where the fan is supposed to screw in are too small so I'm trying to think of a clean-looking way to attach the two without causing too much vibration.

Forgot to order enough pipe clips from chill-tek (ordered 1@79p - forgot to change the order form to 8 ) but a mate who's done this before said cable tidies will do so I bought a whole bag of them @20p from the hardware store.

Now got a whole week before my next exam Pure Maths 3 (even though I did Pure 4 today) so this wll be done soon.

Oh yeah and I got out some automotive polish for the waterblock - it oxidises a small amount of the copper and brings out a really god shine. The angle grinder+wire brush plan tore the hell out of the Akasa I fed it so I'm sticking to hand polishing for now.

[stigweed]

Oh yeah and I didnt pay any tax on the US stuff. I dunno if I was supposed to.

[Mad old tory]

Shhhh wot customs dnt know wont hurt them
Actually i dnt kno whether ur ment to pay tax or not to b honest....

[Lazgoat]

Thanks for all the detail.
I'm thinking of doing the same thing, but getting the Swiftech water blocks instead. Does anyone have a view on the Swiftech MCW5000-A CPU and GPU blocks compared to the Danger Den stuff?

Laz.

[stigweed]

Live update:

Have just spent like the last 2 hours trying out different arrangements. mid tower is just a tad too small for everything. Mostly trying to find somewhere to put the damn reservoir. 1/2" tubing isn't too flexible either. May have to double-sided-sticky-pad it to the roof of the case. Damn pump is too long as well.

Managed to stick the fan and rad together and with a few rubber feet on them its prettty quiet even without the 2 ohm resistor i lost and needed to slow it down.

Anyway. back to work.

[stigweed]

ok Its official i need a bigger case but have no room for one. This is going to take somedoing...
need to get off my sister's crappy pc with bbroken keyboardtoo

[stigweed]

OK got it all ion there. Somehow. But I did it. Running in the BIOS its getting 34C. I managed not to crush my XP1600 core so that's ok too. The thermaltake shim i had been using with air had to go as it fell down over the cpu core and would have crushed it when i increased the pressure on teh waterblock.

After a while I'll plug the drives back in and test the temp in windows. At the moment its only doin 1050Mhz instead of 1.4 stock or 1.88 my usual OC. I'll post some pics as its a tight fit but I've managed to keep it fairly tidy

[stigweed]

Ok. Have been running this on and off since last night. Managing to overclock to 1.89 perfectly stable (inc 3dmark2k1 score) at 41C idle (on air I could only get 1.88 stable on a cool day). At 100% load when folding it heads to 48/49 and stabilises - hotter than I would like. But gaming and 3dmarks don't stress it as much as folding does.

Just pushed it to 1.91GHz - that's a 510MHZ OC! Seems stable at 43C idling. Will try full whack in a minute. Here's a pic of the raditator and tubing. I'll post a pic of hte whole system in a minute. Just hoping the light is alright for my camera this late in the evening.

[Lazgoat]

Cant wait Stigweed. Crack it up and put the lights on so we can see it!

[stigweed]

at 1.91 It crashed in 3dmark. At 1.90 it's staying at 49C (case temp is 30C) at 100% load. Haven't tested it with 3dmark yet. I'm also running with the case side off but putting the panel on should actually improve things if anything.

Got to wire in the relay card first though.

[stigweed]

It's all in there and the panel is closed.

The radiator is lying on the bottom, raised up on 4 rubber pads to stop the vibrations from the 120mm fan which is stuck to it - and it works.

The pump is cable tied to the back of the case where an 80mm fan would go. It's powered through that PCI criticool card. The strange thing is the "external fan power connector" on the card is actually the wrong gender - i.e. you would plug a 4pin PSU cable in there rather than a 4 pin molex device.

80mm Akasa intake in the window. 80mm sunbeam LED fan in front of the 3.5" drives, also intake. Exhausts: 2 x 80mm in the PSU and 1 x80mm Akasa in the front 5.25" drive bays.

Lighting: 300mm UV cold cathode just in front of the motherboard makes the whole case look more airy and less cramped

Here's a bad picture of the finished product due to poor lighting conditions in my hovel.

Next step:
Buy proper 90 degree bends as the pipes are a bit cramped and I could do with better water flow.

edit: attached the wrong picture

[stigweed]

ok so editing it didn't change the image

Anyway i forgot to mention:

rearrange the pips a bit and got a 1 deg drop in CPU and a 1 deg rise in case temp since a pipe was a bit kinked before but it's ok now.

[Lazgoat]

Have you thought about getting one of these super duper XP1700+ b's? With your new cooling setup you'd probably be getting about 2.2Ghz at a minimum. Check out cpucity.co.uk, they are in your neck of the woods as well. If you call them up they can give you ALL the info (dates, steppings etc) you need before you order.
I'm saving my pennies for the Swiftech CPU and GPU waterblocks.

[robbie]

Originally posted by Lazgoat
Have you thought about getting one of these super duper XP1700+ b's? With your new cooling setup you'd probably be getting about 2.2Ghz at a minimum.

Especially on water!!! You should be able to hit that with NO problem!!

One thing, did you remove all the air out of the system by shaking the rad and cpu block? That should lower your temps some as well.
Rob

[stigweed]

Yeah i really got rid of all the air before I isntalled it. Getting 45/46 max at 1.89GHz. I fold using 95% CPU load as 100% causes the temp to rise too much and that causes the gromacs cores to fail. Below 47C it seems to fold fine though. I can get perfect stability at 1.91GHz but gromacs doesn't like it.

I might try adding some more water wetter, the reservoir was pretty full when i added a drop before so I couldn't fit much in. Pipes are looking a funk purple under the UV though.

I'll look into the XP1700+ they should be pretty cheap about now. I work with a guy (the one who sold me the WD HD) who is mates with the guy who owns cpucity so I may be able to get it really cheap. Was kind fo hopign to leave the CPU alone until the Barton XP2600 gets below £60 since I cna't really get anything for my XP1600 anymore. That'll eventually go into either: a small rig on a cheap motherboard for folding or get donated to the folding hardware stockpile in the forums.

[ichorid]

Was kind fo hopign to leave the CPU alone until the Barton XP2600 gets below £60

barton 2600?? nope

2600 is a tbred



yeah, cpucitys great!

got my 2400aiuhb there, shoulda got a 1700 tho... oh well


and stig... rad

better than the black ice, and cheaper.


youd never fit it in a midi case tho !!